Noticing light breaking through the gap in his curtains, Jack squinted at his Holo-
Screen, blinking the fog from his eyes. Seven a.m.

He’d been playing the dEaDINBURGH: Lair of The Ringed video game since
midnight, when the feed had been cut from the live show. He flicked his finger across
the air in front of him, causing the UKBC screen to pop up. The countdown until the feed
re-connected sat at 00:15. Just fifteen more minutes until they had the show back in full
High-Def Holo-Image. Jack saved his progress and kicked at the desk in front of him,
sending his ergonomic chair scooting backwards through the pile of empty energy drink
cans and takeaway boxes littered across the carpet of his living room.

Scratching at his crotch with his right hand, he lifted his left arm and sniffed at
his arm-pit, screwing his face up at the sourness. Should have time for a shower if I get a
move on.

Jack stood with a groan in protest at the crack of his knees. It’d been a while since
he’d had quite so long a session on the game. Scooping a handful of Cheesy-Puffs off the
desk and into his mouth, he headed to the apartment’s little shower cube.

As he sang from the shower, the dEaDINBURGH theme began blasting from the
surround-sound speakers, eliciting a whoop of delight from him as he barrelled from the
bathroom, not bothering to dry himself, body wobbling back into his still-warm chair.

Leaning forward he made a little gesture to enlarge the screen and scanned the
info-bar along the bottom of the page to catch any updates. There were too many to
read so Jack flicked a finger at the Holo-Screen, bringing up a highlights reel on a smaller
screen within the main one. Whilst the main screen flickered into life, he jerked his eyes
to the highlights feed, gleaning everything he could about what had happened to his
favourite Survivors during the feed-loss.

Suzy Wheels, Danny McGhee and Jennifer Shephard, his main characters, were all
more or less where they’d been when the feed had cut twelve hours earlier. Jack flicked
at the screen a few more times, bringing up images of one of the less popular and least-
covered Survivors he’d been following.

Joey MacLeod’s face filled the frame. Jack liked this kid. He’d begun to get a little
more airtime recently, mostly because he’d been in a few scraps with Zoms of late. Jack
remembered him fondly from the episodes where he’d left The Brotherhood a few yearsback, with the old Padre. Those were amongst some of the most unexpected andemotional scenes he’d ever watched and he’d replayed them many times in his mind’seye, lying in bed.

Padre Jock had been a favourite of Jack’s as a kid. As a Zom-Hunter and one of the
most colourful characters on the show. He’d had a huge chunk of airtime over the years
and had consistently been in the Survivors’ top ten chart for over twenty years. Whenhe’d been killed by Bracha, Jack had shed a few tears for the old man. For Jack’s generation, who’d grown up watching him, Padre Jock was as intricately tied to the
show as its theme tune.

Three years later, Jack still felt grief whenever he looked at one of the many
images of Jock on mugs, posters, T-shirts and other merchandise around his home. Jack
had a massive poster of Jock over his bed. It depicted a scene from the show with a
young Jock, blades flashing, silencing five Zombies. It bore the legend: Running rings
around The Ringed.

One of Jack’s online friends had a tattoo on his cheek in the shape of thecharacteristic Ring o’ Roses rash of The Ringed. Despite being into its third decade of
transmission, dEaDINBURGH showed no signs of losing popularity, and if anything it
had gained more viewers than ever. In part this was because of Jock’s protégé Joey and
his best friend, Alys Shephard. Quite simply she was the most skilled combatant the
dead city had.

Many of Jock’s fans had now latched onto the eighteen year old he’d trained out
of the need for a connection to the familiarity of the Padre. Aside from that, they’dgrown to know and love Joey during his time with Padre Jock. Many more had chosen
Alys as their new prime Survivor because of her attachment to Joey and her own
considerable talents. The pair were fast becoming the definitive Survivors of their
generation.

The screen Jack scanned showed Joey and Alys, from behind, in a large open field.Joey had his bow over his back and was following along behind Jennifer’s daughter.Their body language suggested they were tired and were both covered in grey dust. Jack
watched as the cameras zoomed out, revealing a mass of Zoms spilling out into the field
from a cycle path and a little clearing in a woodland. From the trail in the long grass, it
was obvious that the teens had come from the Zom-infested area.

It was a beautiful shot, so much so that it moved Jack to click the little thumbs-upicon at the corner of the screen. He was only the hundredth to do so. It made him feel a
part of something special that he was amongst the first to see the beauty in the
photography.

Wondering how the teens had survived the massive congregation of Zoms andwhy the infected weren’t pursuing them, he whirled the highlights footage over to themain screen and began searching through it, hoping that he hadn’t missed somethingspecial. He looked at the view counter at the edge of the highlights screen.

One view.
A single viewer besides him.Jack felt a thrill surge through him and clicked the thumbs-up icon, making

himself the second person to have done so. He watched amazed as Joey and Alys moved
like crowd-surfers along a mass of the dead. They seemed completely calm, so at ease as
they slipped through and over a swarm of the Ringed. Jack had never seen anything like
it.

Nobody had.

As the scene progressed, it was suddenly cut with footage from earlier in the day.
The pair had battled hundreds of the dead in that same clearing, Joey with an injured
foot in a tree firing arrows, and Alys a whirling, kicking and stabbing demon with her
twin Sai. The images were astounding and contrasted so sharply with the serenity of the
previous footage that Jack felt a prickle all over his skin.

He watched Joey and Alys’ Survivor ratings rocket from around ten thousand
straight to positions two and one, respectively. Realisation suddenly made him jerk in
his seat. He motioned at the screen and watched as his viewer rating appeared. Lastnight he’d been somewhere close to the ten-million region. A respectable position for
someone in Kent. The total viewing figures worldwide for dEaDINBURGH were at
around four billion.

Due to his early support for Joey, and lifelong support of Jock, whom he’d votedfor and thumbed-up hundreds of times, maybe thousands, in his lifetime, Jack’s viewerrating would receive a boost. Factor in his support of Alys by proxy of being a Jennifer
Shephard supporter, and combined with this morning’s early acknowledgement of both
the live-feed and the highlights package, and Jack’s viewer rating should be at an all-
time high, perhaps in the top one million.

Jack blinked in disbelief as he looked at the numbers.
His rating had been propelled into the Top 500, worldwide. Number 1 in Europe.
His Holo-Screen suddenly lit up with emails, messages and invitations regarding

interviews, expert analysis and insights he might be happy to offer. He was being lined
up for a series of appearances across some of the biggest shows on the network and a
clutch of major blogs and newsfeeds. Hell, a news-crew were on their way to his
apartment at that very moment.

Messages of congratulations from his network-family scrolled across his screen.
In an instant he’d gone from being another nobody – an above-average fan who spent a
little too much time watching the most-watched Holo-Programme on the planet and one
of those guys who haunted the thousands of fan sites and pages looking for insights and
extra-footage – to the hottest viewer-consultant in Europe.

Jack’s eyes glazed as he considered the possibilities. He’d always known that hewas someone special. Always felt that he was destined for something better than his
current station in life. Something more important. His great-grandmother had been an
exceptional woman, the first woman to become a true world leader. His own father,
Mark, was a world-famous author. Sure, Dad had ridden the coat-tails of his
grandmother too, but his books continued to sell well years since the old lady’s death.

Jack conjured up an image of his father, Mark, with his arm around him,
congratulating his son, expressing his pride. He watched his fiction-writing father and
himself plan interviews and write opinion pieces together. He teared-up as an image of
himself spoke to an audience of billions whilst his father stood at his side, beaming with
admiration.

This was it. Finally.

Jack glanced down quickly at his mostly-naked wet body, edges of the towel
barely meeting around and under his belly. He gave a curt, decisive nod, to himself. Timeto get sorted. The first thing I’ll do is get that liposuction and skin removal. And my teeth.
Get my teeth fixed. Pectoral implants. The UKBC will pay for everything, they always do for
their correspondents.

With the kudos and the money that’d be coming his way, it was time to get
himself together.

Rising from his seat, he stopped for a second, lifted his right thigh a little and
expelled a cloud of gas before heading to his wardrobe. Drying off, he pulled on a pair ofclean sweatpants, figuring that he’d aim the Holo-Camera from the waist up. Best to be
comfortable.

Jack then pulled on an old dEaDINBURGH T-shirt his dad had given him on his
thirtieth birthday, with an image of Jock in full Plague-doctor outfit on the front. It felt a
little tight, but also felt familiar.

Striding back through to take his seat, he flicked open the Comm for his first
interview with an American news network, allowing himself to enjoy a moment of
satisfaction at finding his rightful place.

So here’s the thing. I’m a huge fan of the vampire chronicles. Vampire Lestat, Queen of the Damned, Tale of the Body Thief, Memnoch; Blood and Gold, Pandora, Vittoria; God I love them and have read each several times over.

Then Ms Rice chucked her Mayfair people at the chronicles and fucking ruined them.

I was hoping for a return to the old chronicles, y’know when reading about these characters truly was like visiting an old friend.

Prince lestat is simply a journey along with an author as she disappears firmly and irreversibly up her own arse in a storm of over-descriptive, self-aware and self-impressed navel-gazing wankery.